The Burton House Mystery

The Burton House Mystery

The twenty-third time that the Burton house was hit by a car was the last. Some say it was a blessing that Timmy wasn't asleep in his room in the front, western corner where the car struck. Though him not having been in bed was a problem in itself.

It didn't seem that the house was the problem. It appeared to be a normal distance away from the road on all sides. There had been no reports of cars hitting it before the Burton family moved in. The first fifteen cars happened within the first year, then it was just a couple a year. The last eight months were so quiet, they had begun to think that the curious episodes had passed. The strange thing was that every single time a car struck the house, one of the Burton's had borne witness.

Mr. Burton and his wife had purchased the three story house five years earlier with their three children: Angela, Timmy, and Cece. The Burton's were a private family, and kept to themselves. The children were home-schooled, and both Mr. and Mrs. Burton did their jobs from home. Mr. Burton was an investor, and Mrs. Burton made and sold soap.

Angela was sixteen when the Burton's bought the house on the corner of Summit and Lexington. She drew the attention of the neighborhood boys, but Mr. Burton didn't allow her to talk to any of them. She would stand in her second story bedroom window and twirl her blonde hair while she looked down, with her clear blue eyes, at the boys skateboarding in the street. They would look up at her and stop what they were doing. They'd watch her watch them until her breasts heaved in excitement, her pale cheeks blushed, and she retreated away from the window.

The first time the house was hit by a car, it was Angela who had seen it from her bedroom window. She described it to the police saying, “It was like the car was coming straight for me. I swear I saw into that man's soul when his eyes met mine.”

The driver survived with just a few minor injuries. When questioned about how he came to plow into a three story house, he said he just couldn't tear his eyes away from her. He said he thought she was an angel.

Cece was thirteen when the Burtons moved into the house. She never went near the window, but she loved to explore in the back yard. The curiosity in her eyes was magnified by her thick glasses. She would find holes in the privacy fence and spy on the neighbors. Peering into the cracks and holes, her long dark hair helped her to blend into the fence, undetected until she'd laugh at a gaggle of boys, or a tiny dog with a massive owner. Her curiosity about the world outside the fence tormented her. She begged her father to let her go to the park with the other girls, but Mr. Burton told her that those girls would be a bad influence, and they only went to the park to smoke cigarettes and flirt with the boys playing basketball. Cece wanted to leave the house more than anything. She drove her mother nuts whining that she would never be normal if she couldn't make friends.

Finally, Mr. Burton allowed her just one time to go to the park and talk to the girls on the condition that she wear his trench coat, and she promised not to smoke. On her first, last, and only outing to the park, Cece didn't make any friends. The girls didn't seem to find her coat fashionable, and when she doffed it, they laughed even harder. The boys only wanted to talk about Angela, and kept telling her to put her coat back on, or go home and get her sister.

It was the day after the park incident that Cece witnessed the second car driving into the house. She was standing on the edge of the fence peeping through the corner when she saw the car coming up near the house. There was an older boy driving, but she recognized the younger boys from the park and started into the street to try to talk to them again. She had to jump out of the way as the car seemed to lose control. It came up on the curb and clipped the edge of the fence right where Cece had been standing. The boys in the car screamed as they swerved back into the street and out of her life forever.

Timmy was seventeen when they moved in. He spent most of his time playing video games, and playing pranks on his sisters. He didn't mind being home all the time at all. On the day that the third car hit the house, Timmy was asked to take out the trash. No sooner did he set foot out on the curb, than a Volkswagen Van full of stoned hippie chicks hopped up on the curb in front of him and took out the mailbox. They stopped to check out the damage to the van and looked at Timmy.

“Come with us, Free-spirit!” purred a girl with dreadlocks barely covering her bare breasts.

Timmy looked around as if to see whom she had been addressing.

“You, Tree-flower!” she stretched out her hand. “Get in!”

Timmy took the hippie's hand and didn't come back home for three days. Mrs. Burton forbid him to go outside for any reason for a month. But Timmy sneaked out of the house and met up with his new friends every night. Later he started sneaking out to go to the bar. He had to buy cool clothes so that he would fit in, but he also had to hide those clothes from his parents. Timmy told his father that he needed the clothes because he had gotten a job. Mr Burton was so proud of him that he bought Timmy a car, which made him the first of the Burton children to have one.

The April before the last car hit the Burton house, Mrs. Burton was out weeding the garden when the driver of a yellow Hummer, seemingly distracted, tore right through the front porch, leaving it a heaping mess of gray wood. That was the twenty-first car in their five years residing.

The twenty-second car was a white pick up truck, driven by an apparently drunk Baptist priest. Angela witnessed the whole thing as she had been in the back yard jumping on the trampoline. The truck went right through the back gate, and stopped just shy of the tramp.

Finally, the twenty-third car hit on the first of May, in the middle of the night. Timmy was driving home “a little tipsy.” He was about to turn into the driveway when he saw Cece sneaking out of her window. The shock of the sight caused him to make a series of poorly judged maneuvers, landing his truck in his very own bedroom. Cece, startled by the collision, fell from her third story window and onto the twisted metal heap below, ultimately killing her.

From then on the Burton family decided to wear black, in remembrance of Cece. And not another car ever hit the house again.

And in case all of there is still some doubt, let it be known that the Burton family wore black in lieu of what they normally wore, nothing at all.