Dear Grandad,

Hello Again – it’s time for another letter! Not much has been happening here since I last wrote, just school, school, school. We’ve been writing stories imagining what we want to be when we’re grown up. Mine was about an artist but I don’t know if I really want to be an artist, I just like to draw! Sometimes I look at all of the paintings you did that are hanging up around our house and think I must have got my love of drawing from you. Who knows?

Anyway, do you remember when I told you about how, although my bedroom faces the back lane and Annie’s room faces the garden, I was glad that I didn’t have her room because she can see the spooky house opposite? Well I am REALLY glad that I don’t have that room now, I can tell you, because I am sure that I saw something moving around in there yesterday and that is weird because definitely nobody lives there. Anyway, what I saw wasn’t really like a person, it was just movement behind the windows, a bit like the change in colour when paint dries out only quicker.

That house is pretty horrible to look at. It’s the same kind of house as ours but it’s the other way round, and if it was tidied up and painted it could look nice. But I don’t think it has been painted for ages and so the walls are all mucky and covered in black stains and mould. There are cracks and gaps where little bits of the walls have fallen off. Some of the windows have cracks in the glass and the paint on the window frames is all peeling off. It’s horrible paint anyway – a yucky brown colour – I guess if it was new and clean it might look okay. Down at the bottom of the house there is a basement, with a few steps going down from the front path (which is only short because the house is really close to the pavement) but I am not sure that you could go down there safely because there are great big plants sprouting up and blocking the way. Why would you want to anyway, there could be anything down there?

Right at the top of the house, where the room opposite Annie’s bedroom is, one of the windows is cracked and there is a hole broken through at the corner just above the windowsill. When it’s really windy the curtains get blown around and if you see that out of the corner of your eye you think there is someone in there moving them around. But when you look properly there is no-one there. It must get wet in there too when it rains a lot and that must make it all smelly and damp. Yuk!

The worst thing about that window, and the hole in the glass, is that sometimes you can see pigeons going in. There are always pigeons flapping around the house and sitting on the roof and the windowsills which is kind of okay I guess, but going into the house? That’s not right. What do they do in there? Make a cup of tea and watch TV? Ha ha. I know that pigeons wouldn’t do that of course, it’s just funny to think of them as living in the house like people do. I think some birds would like to watch TV – probably nature and travel programmes – but I think pigeons would just watch programmes about criminals and things like that. At least all the flappy, scrappy pigeons round here would!

Anyway, back to the movement I saw behind the window… I don’t know what it was because it can’t have been a person, it wasn’t the curtain flapping because it wasn’t windy yesterday and it was too big to be a pigeon. It was strange – doo doo doo doo – really spooky and I would NOT like to think that there was a THING in there looking across at me in MY bedroom.

It’s funny, we get nice birds in our garden and I have seen other ones around and about in other gardens along our road, but I have NEVER seen any of them go over the road to that house – just the pigeons. It’s like the nice birds like to be around the nice houses and only the pigeons will go to a house that is broken. It has become a broken pigeon house (I mean the house is broken not the pigeons!). I wonder what would happen if it wasn’t there. Would the pigeons have to find somewhere else to go?

Crikey mikey… this letter has got quite long. I don’t know where all these words come from. Usually I can’t think of things to write but when I am writing to you I always have lots to say. It’s nice to tell you about what I am thinking but I do miss seeing you. I am sure that if you saw the house and the pigeons you’d know what was going on so I hope you find it interesting to read about.

Lots of spooky love

Kate

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