By Scott Howe, 1996
Regina Babbit is quite an interesting little girl. She’s the only child on our street so she’s sort of become a surrogate grand daughter to everyone who lives on Donner drive. She loves all the attention; no doubt she has little trouble garnering her share of it. She truly keeps us young.
Most days you can find her skipping from house to house talking with anyone who's willing to listen; we’ve all grown accustomed to her daily visits, and she in turn loves hearing our stories too, of how life was when we were her age.
Regina’s favorite pastime is weaving intricate stories about her dog, Simon. She loves that dog and she has a tendency to give him magical qualities throughout her stories; over time she’s come to do this with all the pets in the complex. You can’t help but smile at her imaginative style of storytelling, and each story masks, if only for a short time, how truly frightened and agitated most animals actually become whenever they’re near her. Then the sad reality of what makes little Regina such a tragic figure floods into your mind… again.
All of us feel terrible that the animals are so scared of her. It makes it so much worse, knowing that she just wants to play with them. No doubt this is why she creates, in the stories she tells, her own world where all the animals love to be near her. On some level, the little girl must remember what really happened so long ago that changed everything… for all of us.
Regina’s little dog Simon was killed by a speeding car. None of us will ever forget what happened; that day is seared into our collective souls. We heard the car’s wheels, screeching around the corner, and we saw Regina as she turned her head to see the oncoming car racing straight toward Simon. She tried to grab him before he ran into the street, but it was too late. It all happened so fast, and there was nothing any of us could do to change the events of that day. Regina never talks about what happened that day. There have been whispers between some of us who live on the street where it happened, that Regina isn‘t entirely aware, either, of everything that happened the day that Simon was killed.
There really was nothing anyone could do. They were both just too far out into the street and the car was traveling much too fast. That car took the both of them from us. It may be the reason the little girl doesn’t seem to know what really happened to her. It was all too sudden.
For the longest time, there was a blackness that came over us. As the years passed, no one came out to sit on their porch anymore. No one talked to each other anymore. No one did much of anything anymore.
But then something amazing happened; you couldn’t believe it unless you’d seen it for yourself. Regina started reappearing, only briefly at first, but she appears all the time now.
Even the occasional Passer by has seen her. Some have stopped and listened to her tell one of her stories. They don’t realize she’s a ghost, and we don’t usually tell them.
We don’t care how or why she came back, and no one talks to Regina about the accident for fear the truth might frighten her away. None of us is prepared to let go of her again.
Suzanne Adan has always been the most spririted Halloween'er. Every Halloween, without fail, she puts out more spooky decorations than she has room for, but the result is always wonderfully festive...