A House in the Middle of Nowhere

     After three or four miles of ghost debating, we stopped in front of a dilapidated, two-story house with filthy windows, a caved-in porch roof, and rickety steps leading to a porch with several missing floorboards. Janean agreed with my comment about what a sorry sight it was and dirty-dog dared “Patricia” to “run up’n knock on ghost man’s door.”
     Patty took a second before dirty-double-dog daring Janean, and so it went with one dare after the other.
     I had my hand on the door handle, contemplating Lori’s “dirty-cuatro-dog dare,” when I said oh holy crap, and Janean hollered, “GET US THE HELL OUT’A HERE!”
     I could only assume then that she too had seen what I was hoping to be a mere figment of my wild imagination.
     Patty didn’t bother to ask why, and from the rolling smoke trail behind us, she evidently put the pedal to the metal. In fact, she drove like a bat out of hell, and centrifugal force was pushing Lori and me so far back in the seat that I thought we’d be exiting the car through the trunk before “Leadfoot” let off the gas.
     The end of the dusty road provided a few moments to collect our composure, and for Patty to ask God to please make sure there was no telltale damage to the muffler from “that little bottom-out thingie we did back there.”
     Four extremely deep breaths were taken in, four sighs of relief were exhaled, and four shopoholics resumed their original journey with Lori asking what I saw back there. I shrugged and asked Janean what she saw back there. She shrugged and guessed a shadow. Patty had never seen a shadow on an overcast day and asked me what they look like. I wasn’t positive but supposed they would look something like a hoary cartoon skeleton that fried its wiry hair when a bony finger came in direct contact with an electrical outlet.
     Patty felt that was a descriptive shadow and asked Janean if it described the one she saw. “More’er less,” was Janean’s reply.
     Lori wondered how much more or how little less, so Janean turned her head, glanced over her imaginary glasses, her shoulder, and the front seat saying, “Neither’a either.”