Read an Excerpt
The Haunted Hutch
“Surprise!” exclaimed Lila Palmer.
Her daughter, Jenny, stifled a gasp. It was indeed a surprise—but not a good one. Jenny’s parents had unexpectedly arrived at her Thief River Falls home. And while they were always welcome to visit, the gift they had brought was not a happy sight.
The china hutch was a gorgeous piece of furniture, but its worth was measured only in sentimental value. The antique had been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Apparently, now it was Jenny’s turn to own it.
As a child, Jenny had never given much thought to the hutch. She would have ignored it altogether if not for the times she had gotten into trouble on its behalf. The items displayed behind the hutch’s glass doors had a strange habit of rearranging themselves, and the hutch doors often popped open without explanation.
For years, Jenny shouldered the blame, even though she was innocent. Fortunately for her, when she was 8 years old, her mother witnessed a door opening on its own; a statuette jumped off its shelf and onto the floor. After that, Jenny wasn’t blamed anymore.
Before the girl’s ninth birthday, the Palmers hit a stretch of bad luck. The family’s house was burglarized, and the thieves took several hunting rifles and a jewelry collection that included Lila’s heirloom wedding rings.
Mere months later, an electrical fire destroyed the Palmers’ home, consuming most of their belongings. The only item to survive the blaze was the old hutch. Lila took special care in cleaning the soot off her prized possession, and while she did so, she made a startling discovery: The two stolen wedding rings had suddenly appeared on one of the hutch’s shelves.
Even after the Palmers moved the hutch into their new home, its contents continued to change positions, and the doors sometimes opened themselves. At first, these happenings were little more than fun conversation topics. However, as the years passed, Jenny detected a ghastly pattern: Every time the hutch doors opened, a loved one died within three months!
Jenny hated herself for discovering the correlation. She spent most of her teen years in fear of finding the hutch open, and when this harbinger came, she waited in dreadful anticipation for death to find someone she cared about. It always did, without exception.
By contrast, in the years after she left the hutch behind, Jenny didn’t attend a single funeral. It would seem that in escaping the antique cabinet, she had saved her family and friends from the Grim Reaper.
Yet here it was. Death—the hutch—had found her again. Jenny silently debated her options. Although it would break her mother’s heart, she eventually chose to refuse the gift.
She didn’t have to.
As the hutch was lifted off the truck, the glass on its doors broke. Jenny tried not to smile; now she had an excuse for keeping it in the garage.
Three years came and went, and the hutch sat in storage. But time softened Jenny’s opinion of the family treasure. Eventually, her sentiments got the better of her. (The hutch’s predictions of death couldn’t be real. They were simply matters of coincidence.) She fixed the hutch and moved it into her dining room.
For the better part of a month, Jenny enjoyed the old piece of furniture without incident. Then one day it happened. Jenny came home from grocery shopping to find the hutch’s doors standing open.
Exactly three months later, her 36-year-old cousin died from a heart attack. Jenny wasted no time in getting rid of the hutch, once and for all.