Dearly Detested

I hadn't been working for the newspaper for very long when I was told that if I wanted to keep my job, I had to come up with something new and exciting to get readership up. I'd only lived in Metamora for a few weeks honestly. How was I supposed to know what was the right kind of thing was for these people? I figured that small towns are always full of drama, full of passive aggressive attitudes and fake niceties during PTA meetings. I'd been given a similar task when I had been working in NYC, but there you could write whatever you wanted in the paper and there was only a fraction of a chance that anyone would even read it, much less be bothered to comment on it.

I thought that a "Dearly Detested" column would be a fun idea in a small town. It got readership up, sure, but if anything, it also got a lot more shit stirred up as well. Enough shit it nearly cost me not only my job but my life as well.

The first week, it was relatively calm. I had put in the Sunday paper that there was going to be a new column where you could write an anonymous letter to someone that you didn't care for - for whatever reason - and it would work similarly to any other "Dear Abby" column, where I would put in some kind of editorial opinion on the situation without knowing all the details, because everyone loves a stranger's opinion. But when I pitched it to Shannon she had agreed, so, if it went badly it was her fault for approving it. Or so I figured.

The first "Dearly Detested" letter came in from Karen who lived in the small red house on Excelsior, closer to the edge of town but still very firmly in town. I read it over and very quickly realized that what I had expected was not what I was going to get.

"Dearly Detested,

Whoever thought I wouldn't notice that my three chickens had been replaced with two statues and a doll, I would like them back. I know who you are, Rob, and there's no way that I'm going to be cracking open these ceramic eggs for breakfast. I understand that you're still angry that I didn't go to that dance with you in high school, but it's been over fourty years, you need to let it go. And also let my chickens go. Back in my backyard. If not, I will get Abby to curse you and your family for the next seven generations with no remorse. If it wasn't you, Rob, I still expect you to return my chickens because I heard the clucking coming from your house the other day and considering I'm still looking for my own chickens, that makes you the prime suspect. I'll talk to you at the store on Thursday as well but I have a feeling you're going to run away from me like you always do.

Sincerely,

Klucky Karen."

I put my head in my hands immediately as I realized that this column that seemed like an easy way to get people invested in the paper might be more work than I had originally anticipated. I got up from my desk with the letter from Karen and walked over to Shannon's desk, seeing as she knew the town a bit better and would have a better vantage point on how to handle the situation.

"Hey Shannon, can I -" She held up her index finger, telling me to wait a moment. She finished whatever she was reading before turning to me. "Can I get your opinion on something?"

"Sure, what?" She seemed busy and I didn't want to bug her too much, but without the local opinion, I didn't know what I was getting into.

I held out the letter. "So, the new column you wanted me to start? I was gonna do it sort of 'Dear Abby' style. This was the first submission I got from Karen and I'm just wondering like... Does Karen want to start shit or does she not know what I meant by asking for Anonymous submissions?"

Shannon didn't even read the letter, simply left it hanging from my hand. "Karen? Oh she absolutely knows what you mean by anonymous and she absolutely wants to start shit. Also she will write in if you edit it at all and be very angry, so honestly, I'd say just publish it as is, see what Rob has to say about it."

She looked back at her screen, still not having looked at the letter. "Wait, how did you know that she directed it at Rob?"

Shannon sighed as she looked back at me. "Sam, believe me, there's no one else in town Karen would write about. She's been bugging Rob about her chickens that he supposedly took from her for the past year. He didn't actually take her chickens, the chickens died and people didn't know how to tell her that they were just dead, so Rob tried to be nice and replaced their dead bodies with something that still looked like chickens. She just. Didn't notice that her chickens had been laying dead in her backyard for about a week."

"That's.... Kinda disgusting, kinda sad."

"Yup." Shannon nodded, finally fully turning away from the work on her computer. "Karen's sweet, but really wants her chickens back."

I thought things through for a minute. "Why not just give her new chickens?"

"The first set died because she didn't feed them. A bunch of us decided that we shouldn't make any more chickens suffer through that, so we decided not to try and keep that ruse up." She sighed. "If you want to go talk to her, you're welcome to try, but I'm not sure she'd listen to you any more than she's listened to the rest of us."

Did I care enough to waste my time convincing some old woman that her chickens were dead? Not really. Did I think that at the very least it would provide an interesting story that everyone in town would be invested in? Maybe. Did I want to make sure that I wasn't receiving letters from "Klucky Karen" every week? Definitely.

----

I rolled up to Karen's house and noticed that it looked like it hadn't been touched since the 80s, faded pink flamingos and peeling red paint showing signs of how long it had been since anyone had done anything for the place. Considering it said backyard in the letter, it made sense that I couldn't tell where there could possibly have been chickens housed, but even then it didn't look like there would be much when I looked back there either. I saw one of the statues Shannon had mentioned hiding among the overgrown bushes, rust showing where there was once paint, and a small, round, yellow object on the ground next to it that must've been one of the ceramic eggs that Karen had mentioned not wanting to eat.

I texted my girlfriend to let her know that I was going over to this random old lady's house, and if I didn't return by that night, she should definitely call the police. I got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Sometimes there's a feeling when walking around small towns with a lot of history, a feeling that a building has a lot more history to it than is told, that there's something just slightly more sinister hiding behind closed doors that may or may not be opened. There was something cold about the house, something lifeless, something that most old ladies never seemed to have a problem with.

I rang the doorbell and heard it echo throughout the house. I'd met Karen a few times before, had driven past here before, but it never seemed to be this empty, and she never really seemed the kind of person whose home would be empty and cold, if anything overstuffed with kitschy things and kept at 80 degrees year round. I didn't hear any response. I waited a minute, listening for anything from the quiet house, and rang it again. "She's old, maybe it's too high pitched and she didn't hear it," I muttered, knocking hard on the door. Again silence. I took a few steps back from the door, looking to see if there were any lights visibly on. There were curtains pulled on all of the windows, so in the midday sunshine it was hard to tell if there were lights on or sun filtering through. "I guess maybe she's in the backyard?"

As I walked into the backyard, it didn't look like there had ever been chickens in the backyard, but even more than that it hardly looked like there had been a person back there in 40 years. "Ms Jacobsen? Are you back here?" I called out, wondering if she would be able to hear me. I was pretty sure she was only in her 60s, so it didn't seem like she would be that disorganized, but everyone ages at their own rate, so maybe she's not as together as I expected. "Ms Jacobsen, where are you?"

"Oh hello dear, you must be the new boy in town." I whirled around and found a small woman wearing a large sunhat emerge from between the towering, overgrown vegetation, somehow evading the spikes of old rose bushes and persistent raspberries.

"Ah, yes, I'm Sam. Sam Blackwell." She weaves her way over to me and tilts her head far back so that she can look up at my face beyond the wide brim of her hat. I stick a hand out and she tentatively shakes it.

"Well, lovely to meet you Sam. You can just call me Karen, you don't have to go callin me Ms Jacobsen."

"Of course Karen. I was just wondering if you might be willing to talk to me about your chickens? I work for the paper and so I saw your letter and just wanted to get the full story, maybe see if I could figure out a way to get this situation all taken care of."

The woman's eyes seemingly lit up, even as the rest of face was morphing into a frown. "Ahhh, so you did get my letter. Good, good. Yes, of course I've got time to talk about my girls, please, come on in." And she began to disappear towards the back door to the house.

I contemplated if I was doing the right thing, if I was really going to survive this meeting with this little old woman who seemed nice enough on the outside, but I couldn't be sure if there was something she was hiding or what. "I noticed that you, uh, didn't seem to hear the doorbell, is it broken?" I decided small talk would be a good way to get a grip on whether or not I should expect this woman to murder me or not.

She looked over her shoulder for a moment at me before answering. "Oh, no, it still works just fine. There are just plenty of kids in this town who like to ding dong ditch my house, and it's easiest to just not even respond to the doorbell these days." We reached the back door and she opened it. "I wasn't expecting anyone to come by anytime soon, so it's a bit of a mess, sorry. If you could leave your shoes by the door, please. Would you like some tea?"

I toed my shoes off as I looked around the inside of the house. While the outside seemed cluttered, messy, unkempt, the inside was clean and almost barren, very minimal furniture, all very bland, as though the house was getting ready for sale on the inside but no one had bothered to do anything about the outside. "I…. sure, if you're making tea I'd take a cup, thank you."

She smiled at me as I stepped in. "You know, it's cliche but I still like to say it - it's not much but it's home. If you wanna take a seat at the table over here, then you can write down notes or whatever you might need, just clear anything off a chair for yourself." I looked at the table, a plain vase of wilted flowers in the middle of it but nothing else sitting on the tabletop or any of the chairs. I pulled one out, pausing for a moment to make sure the woman was alright and didn't need any help before I took a seat. I pulled out a small notebook that I had in my pocket. People always expect reporters to have a notebook with them at any given moment, but if anything it made things a lot easier than trying to type things out on your phone or remember pieces of information. 'You never know when a story will come up' was what I was always told in school, and it had come in handy before.

Karen came back over and sat down across from me at the table, the water for tea presumably boiling in the kitchen. "So, you came by to ask about my chickens?"

"Yeah, just wanted to get to know the whole situation since I'm new, and Shannon down at the office made it seem like this was a big thing that's been going on for a while, you know, just wanted to get an idea on the situation since you were the only one who wrote in for the new Dearly Detested column and I just wanted some context."

Her smile as she settled into her chair was unnerving. "Of course. Have you talked to Rob at all about things yet?"

"I have not yet."

"Alright, well, he's gonna try and tell you all these things about how I couldn't take care of the chickens but I just wanna say, it's all a lie." She took a moment, like she was listening for the whistle of the kettle, but there was nothing there.

"Can I ask where you kept the chickens?"

"Oh, there's a shed in the back that I kept them in, but I also let them wander around the yard."

"Did you used to have a fence that enclosed your backyard?"

"I did use to have one, yes, but since I don't have the chickens, I didn't bother keeping it maintained."

I tried to think like this woman for a second and found it very confusing and hard to do, so I stopped. "Have you considered that he doesn't want to give you the chickens back because you don't still have a fence up?"

"No. Because that's not the reason."

"Then what is?"

"If you stop interrupting me, maybe I'll get there." She pauses for a minute and I tilt my head down, yielding the conversation back to her. "So I've known Rob my whole life, as it happens in small towns. We were friends in high school, but ended up going our separate ways while still both ending up back here in Metamora. I think that he was angry because I didn't stay with him when we were younger, and then also I think he wanted the chickens for himself. It was always nice to be able to go out and get fresh eggs in the morning for breakfast. Some of the neighbors would also come by, ask if I had any eggs, and it was a nice way to make a couple bucks because you know how we are, always gotta pay someone back or else they'll bring it up later. Rob wasn't always doing the best, bit of a drinking problem, so I think he wanted the extra cash and the possibility to take one of my girls out if he was in the mood for chicken that night."

I started absentmindedly sketching in my notebook while she was talking. "Did people go to him even though he took your chickens?"

"Oh yeah! A little bit further of a walk or a drive in the morning, but people didn't care where they were coming from as long as they had a chance at them. Even when I told them all the chickens were stolen!"

"Can you think of any reason why the rest of the folks here in town wouldn't help you get your chickens back? That's certainly the vibe I get around here."

She sighed. In that moment her age showed again, the tired sigh of a woman who people either didn't like or didn't care about, the sigh of a woman who was lonely in a town where she should have felt surrounded by love. "I mean, there are parts of my life that certain people in this town disapprove of that I don't feel need to be rehashed in the paper, so if you want to know you can ask someone else. But I think that that's the main reason why no one was really intending to help me get the chickens back. People also always are thinking that I don't know how to take care of them, that since I'm 'so old' to quote some of the people in town, that I shouldn't even have chickens."

My phone began to ring, interrupting our meeting. "I'm so sorry, I just gotta see who this is." I pulled my phone out and saw that it was from my boss, Shannon. "I'm so sorry, it's my boss, I've gotta take this."

"Of course, of course. I'll just check on the tea." It wasn't until that moment that I realized that if she was boiling water, it should have boiled by now, right? I got up and walked to the back door, answering my phone there. "Hey Shannon, what's up?"

"Where are you right now?" She sounded worried, not like a boss wondering why an employee wasn't at work, but like a friend wondering what kind of shit another friend was about to get into.

I tried to look into the kitchen to see Karen but I couldn't at the moment. "I'm interviewing Karen Jacobsen? I told you I was leaving to do that on my way home."

"Wait you were being serious?"

"Of... Course? Why wouldn't I be?"

There was a long pause, like she was trying to figure out the best way to tell me something but couldn't get past the idea of what was happening. "You... Wait... So are you like, in her house talking to her?"

"Yeah? Shannon, why are you so surprised by this?"

"Well, because that house has been abandoned for years."

I turned towards the back door, looking out across what was once a yard and now was a modern jungle, hoping that Karen wouldn't hear me. "What are you talking about? Sure it's plain, but not abandoned."

She sighed into the phone, a crackle of static. "Sam, I don't know who the hell you're talking to in there, but it's not Karen Jacobsen."

"What?"

"Karen Jacobsen was my grandma, I gave you that letter as a joke. She's not still around."

I turned around and saw nothing except for the empty house, this time noticing the thick layer of dust that coated everything. I quickly put my shoes on, making my way out of the house as quickly as possible. "Why did you do that?"

"Sam? Is everything alright dear?" I could've sworn I heard Karen say that behind me as I quickly walked around the house, not turning to see who or what was talking to me.

"I felt bad because you didn't get any letters. I didn't wanna give it away to you immediately when you were still here at the office, so I didn't tell you that it was all a joke."

There was an anger bubbling up inside me. "Wow, thanks Shannon, way to make me feel like an idiot."

"I would've told you before you tried to publish it! Or it would've been a funny way to tell people about it! I don't know."

I got to my car and got in, turning the key in the ignition, ready to get away from the eerie house. "So who was I talking to?"

Shannon got serious again. "I really don't know. They always said my grandma haunted the place, so maybe you were talking to her ghost?"

My blood ran cold. This couldn’t be happening again. "I really, really hope that's not the case."