At the Corner of Belfast and Alger

Walking back from the library tonight with the Young Darkness and Sparkle Magic Machine Dancer Princess (never let your children choose their own nicknames), we pass by the Witch’s House and Sam says “Hey Dad, who do you think is the spookiest person in our neighborhood?”

“You mean besides me?”

The Witch’s House is dark green, with black shutters and a high gabled roof. There’s a dead tree in the front yard and a tall wooden fence running around the back. Along the fence someone has hung pentagrams made from twisting sticks together. The front lawn is scraggly and stunted, no matter what time of year.

I’ve called the Witch’s House since I moved here seven and a half years ago because, well, it looks like a Witch’s House — in a sort of Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, and Ray Bradbury kind of way.

Earlier this summer I was out taking a walk one evening and passed by the Witch’s House. The blinds — which are usually drawn — were open. I could see into the dining room: A typical table with four chairs, a glass vase at the center with what were either dried sticks or pussy willows in it. The walls of the room were painted a deep red and lined with old photographs, framed etchings, and mounted animal skulls.

After my walk, I went home and called Sam (he was visiting grandparents in California) to tell him what I had seen. He was impressed, although I don’t think he quite believed me. The blinds have not been open since — at least, not when we’ve passed by.

I met someone a few years back who lived there, in the Witch’s House. One of those odd moments when I inadvertently bring out a piece of my private mythology and reveal it to the world, with problematic results. I was in a store, paying for something. The clerk, a pretty Asian girl in her twenties, looked at my address printed on the check and said “You live on my street.”

I asked her where she lived. She began “On the corner of Belfast and Alger, in the dark green…”

“…in the Witch’s House?” I blurted out.

“What?”

“Oh . . . nothing,” I mumbled. “Thanks…”

My son reminded me tonight that the original (or, at least since we’ve lived here) inhabitants of the Witch’s House moved out three years ago . . . on Halloween. I vaguely recall the moving truck there, kids in costumes navigating around it while people carried out cardboard boxes and furniture.

Both of my kids call it the Witch’s House. All of the kids in the neighborhood call it the Witch’s House. My daughter practically yells it every time we pass, making me (I admit) feel a little bit nervous and afraid and perhaps even guilty.

But every time I drive by, it flickers across my consciousness, subliminal and uncontrollable: “There’s the Witch’s House…”