The Haunted Chair

There was once an unhappy family – a very unhappy family – a family so unhappy that they were known for it. Milkmen, postmen, vagrants and window cleaners – would remark amongst themselves upon the extraordinary level of misery in this household.

For though they had a good large country home, and reasonable grounds, and money was not much of a problem, and they enjoyed perfect health and they had all had higher educations – whenever they sat down for a meal the father of this family would feel compelled to begin the most unnecessary arguments.

"You haven't washed," he would say to his son.

"You're late," he would complain to his daughter.

"I think you've served us the pigswill by mistake!" he would mutter to his wife.

And she would scream and run from the room, and the daughter would burst into tears, and the son would eat in silence before returning to some task in the barn or the woodshed.

And as this family all lived together and required three meals a day this single bad habit of the father's was enough to ensure that they were never, ever happy. For though they might forgive him, and put on a brave face, and even invite a friend to join them at supper – the old man could be relied upon to ruin even the simplest of occasions.

"Is that a hat?" he asked a friend of his wife's. "Or is it a surgical dressing?"

"Do you have fleas?" he asked another, "or are you incontinent?"

"Are you going to stop laughing like that?" he asked a friend of his son's, "or am I going to have to shoot you?"

"I might have guessed you were a farmer's son," he told his daughter's suitor. "You smell of shit."

Strangely enough, this only happened at mealtimes – for when he was away from the dining room the father was the model of wit, charm and sophistication. Indeed, when he came to die, the lanes of the neighbourhood were jammed with mourners – and the people of the district all remarked upon the sadness of his passing.

The family, however, breathed a sigh of relief, and the son took his father's place at the head of the table.

"Stop blubbing," he snapped at his sister. "The funeral's been over for hours!"

"You're like an old woman!" he snapped at his mother – who was.

"What do you mean – no dinner?" he complained (at breakfast) "What do you mean no breakfast?" he complained (at dinner). "What do you mean – no elevenses?" he complained at half past four one afternoon.

You're like an old woman," he complained again (for he was much less inventive than his father).

And the women of the house reluctantly accepted that life without the father would be surprisingly similar to what it had been before. And that, far from making a fresh start they would be making a tedious continuation – and the daughter sobbed the louder while the mother struggled to guess what meal her son would be expecting next.

That is, for about another couple of weeks – and then the son was involved in a freak accident involving a boulder which had been inadvertantly left in a tree. He was killed almost instantly, certainly within a few hours, certainly after his legs stopped kicking – and it was decided not to bury him as nobody could be bothered to move the boulder.

The women sighed, but soon got over it – the daughter married her farmer's son, and he became the man of the house.

"And I'd just like to say – " he told the wedding guests from his seat at the head of the table. "I'll have a shag every night or she gets a slug in the kisser."

The mother and the daughter were terribly distraught (though the guests thought this utterly hilarious) and the son-in-law met with another tragic boulder-related accident.

"We should get these trees checked before it happens again," the mother remarked.

"Ah shaddap!" said the daughter, from the dining room.

But then, one evening, a few weeks later there came a knock at the door; and the mother opened it to reveal an old and mysterious stranger.

"I have travelled for many years o'er many a land," the mysterious stranger began. "Yea! I was a young man when I did commence my quest – a quest for dark and sinister object . . . A haunted chair, no less!" he proclaimed – sending a shiver through the mother and the daughter.

"A chair so horribly haunted that words alone cannot express the extent of its haunted-ness."

"Could this be a chair – " the mother remarked – "that consumes the sitter with a devilish influence? A chair which turns its occupants to vicious ogres? A chair so evil that it must be forsaken and burned and shouted at in latin?"

"Could it be this chair?" asked the daughter – bringing it to the doorstep.

"Ur – no," said the mysterious stranger. "But thanks for checking anyway. Goodnight."

Text © 2005 Adam Acidophilus  -  Illustrations © 2005 Guy Venables