The house was brand new, olive green and next to the house on the corner.  We moved in with the help of the neighbors down the street.  You see, my father had recently passed away and my mother did not want to stay out in the country with three small children.

We moved to 504 12th Street, Mendota, Il.  Nice home, basement, and two stories.  When we first moved there I slept in the room with my mom and my brothers each got a room of their own.  Robert, the younger, got the room at the top of the stairs, and Verle, the elder brother got the back bedroom because it was more secluded, and he was twelve years old.

After a while my mother found another man, and Robert was moved in with Verle and I took the front bedroom.  As I lay in my bed I could see a wall, the doorway to the stairs, and the bathroom door.  At a ninety degree angle to the bathroom door was my brothers' door.  We stayed in that home for a long time.  My aunt would come over and they would tell us stories about ghosts and creepy things that had happened to them when they were younger.  They tried to scare us with Bible stories that would come from "beyond the grave" indicating that they were not in control of the pages opened in the Bible.

My new step-father decided that there was space behind that blank wall in my bedroom that could be used for storage.  I'm not sure what we were supposed to be storing.  Everything had a place.  Anyway, they cut away the sheetrock in my room, making a big dusty mess that I did not like at all.  Inside the hollow they found a three-foot pile of sheetrock, dust, newspapers, old rags and the like.  My step-father then said the word that would haunt me the rest of my time in that room.  "Fire trap."  Then he went on to explain that all the paper and sheetrock in the hollow could have heated up and spontaneously combusted.  Well, that is not what he said.  He said that the trash could have gotten hot and caught on fire.  GREAT!  Put that information into the mind of an immaginative nine year old and you get all kinds of trouble.

That night, I went to sleep like any other night.  I closed my eyes and began to dream.  My older brother had decided to take a bath.  It was hot outside and he was trying to cool down.  I listened to him, in my dreams, singing to himself as he often did.  Since the bathroom was off my bedroom it was easy to hear.  All this was a dream, keep in mind.  So I was in my room and suddenly there was smoke.  It began to seep from the make-shift door on the hollow by the stairs leading out.  I opened my eyes and saw flames pouring out of the cubby into my room.  I opened the bathroom door to tell my brother of the fire, and he saw the smoke and told me to call down to our mom and get help.  He began to scream, but did not get out of the tub.  He sat in the tub, soaked and soapy, crying out.  I opened the door leading down the stairs and saw there was no way out.  The passageway was blocked with flames licking across them to the wall of the bathroom.  I stood at the top of the stairs, one hand on the door handle and one hand on the frame and I opened my mouth.  The oddest hiss eminated from my lungs.  I could not scream.  I was terrified.  I tried to scream again, but there was that hiss.  I was beside myself with fright.  I went back to the bathroom door and opened it so maybe our mom would hear Verle screaming but it was no use.  The fire had begun to burn through the bathroom door.  My brother was still in the tub, he said he was safe if he stayed wet.  He was still shouting, screaming and began splashing the water in the tub. 

I tried once again to scream for my mother but like before only the strange silent whispering hiss would come out of my mouth.  As the flames reached me, I woke up from the nightmare.  This happened every night for the rest of our life in the house.  Because of the irresponsible statement of an unintelligent man, my nights were consumed with the fear of being caught upstairs, helpless and unable to call out.  I didn't even know that a person could be too frightened to scream.  Why would I dream what I did not know?